J.M.W. Turner: Sketchbooks, Drawings and Watercolours

D16762–D16889; D40988–D40990

Turner Bequest CXCIII

Brown leather bound sketchbook with the cover tooled in black lines, marbled edges and one brass clasp. Front cover is stamped in black ‘CXCIII’ top right. Back cover is inscribed by the artist in black ink ‘27 | Remarks’, centre top (D40990 The inscription, now very faint and almost illegible, is recorded by Finberg.
106 leaves of white wove writing paper, approximate page size 115 x 94 mm (see Technical notes for paper type)

Inside front cover (D40988) is numbered ‘381’ as part of the Turner Schedule in 1854 and endorsed by the Executors of the Turner Bequest, inscribed in black ink ‘No.381 | 19 leaves of slight sketches | in pencil | H.S. Trimmer’ and initialled in pencil by John Prescott Knight, ‘JPK’ and Charles Lock Eastlake ‘C.L.E.’.

Accepted by the nation as part of the Turner Bequest 1856

Turner used this sketchbook during his first tour of Italy in 1819, one of twenty-three related to that trip. The book is so titled, ‘Remarks’ after the artist’s own label and comprises studies of works of art seen in various galleries and palaces in Rome. In addition there are a handful of topographical sketches relating to Rome and to the artist’s return journey through France in January 1820. The book ends with views of Calais and Dover, marking the sea crossing back to English soil.

Turner seems to have consciously reserved the use of this book for the study of works of art in Italy, making notes and sketches in a number of collections including the Palazzo Torlonia-Bolognetti, the Villa Borghese, the Palazzo Pallavicini-Rospigliosi, the Palazzo Barberini and the Palazzo Doria-Pamphili. His copies tend to be schematic and his comments somewhat cursory and notational, mostly concerned with colour and tonal balance. He also compiled a list of contemporary landscape artists in Rome, see folio 100 (D16876; Turner Bequest CXCIII 99). In addition, like certain pages in the Vatican Fragments sketchbook (see Tate D15231; Turner Bequest CLXXX 70a), many of the sheets have been prepared with a wash of grey, presumably for chiaroscuro and coloured drawings of paintings and sculpture, see folios 7–80 (D16772–D16847; Turner Bequest CXCIII 6–79). Cecilia Powell has argued that he may have intended it to form a Roman parallel to the Studies in the Louvre sketchbook from 1802 (Tate; Turner Bequest LXXII).1 However, for some reason, these grey pages were ultimately left unused. Powell has suggested that Turner may have been hampered by the copying restrictions placed upon visiting artists, or simply that he did not find many subjects impressive enough to absorb his attention.2

Finberg’s numbering of the sketchbook took no account of a partially removed page which has now been counted in the present folio arrangement. A concordance of Tate and Finberg numbers follows: